Twin Mountain Lunch Room, Twin Mountain, N.H. 30K

Twin Mountain Lunch Room, Twin Mountain, N.H. 30K

View of a small roadside gas and refreshment stop in a rural settting. A single gas pump stands at the left, closer to the road. This image is part of a series made by one of the three Eastern Illustrating & Publishing Company photographers assigned to cover New England or upstate New York. The glass plates would be sent back to Belfast, Maine, and processed into postcards at the printing plant on High Street. The lunch room was a category of restaurant that cropped up in cities, towns and, as motoring became an activity, along quiet stretches of road in between settled areas. Here the passerby could refill his gas tank, come in and sit down for a quick, informal meal, and take a break from driving. In this particular establishment, he could also get some basic groceries. Here we see the usual ingredients: a modest frame building just larg enough to house a small kitchen, a few tables and shelves for grocery staples, a front porch with a bench, a gas pump, and lots of signs touting products, such as "Lunch Room/ Free Camp Ground...Souvenirs/ Balsam Pillows/ Post Cards/ Milk/ Butter/ Eggs/ Groceries Etc....White Mountain Ice Cream-- Pure and Creamy". In an image conveying the early commercialization of a wild and scenic region, we see the precursor to the American gas stop offering fast food and refreshment on the road, starting as a business model catering particularly to the tourist trade. The Eastern photographers took note of such attractions along the way, however basic. Since post cards were advertised, one wonders if he alerted this lunch room's proprietor to his work creating postcard images. Twin Mountain was a particularly scenic place and an unincorporated community near the base of Mount Washington, the highest of the Whites.